2012 Predictions

Before the year ends I’d like to make some 2012 predictions and welcome other’s predictions in the comment threads. My predictions are based on what I think the current state of things will be by January 1st, 2013.

Economy:

The economy will do better than expected due to Europe avoiding the worst case scenarios of their current crisis.

The US will not enter a new recession.

Housing will have recovered slightly but will still not be great.

Small business hiring will continue to pick up throughout the year.

Initial Weekly unemployment claims will be about 300,000, back to pre-recession levels.

Consumer confidence will continue to improve.

GDP growth will slightly exceed expectations and job growth will be modest throughout the year.

Due to continued steady job growth and workforce decline that has been going on for the last 10 years, unemployment will end up below 8% in the December 2012 BLS situation report.

Politics:

President Obama's popularity will rise as the trend in the economy continues to move upward. He will spend most of the year with positive approval, sometimes topping 50%.

The right wing will not succeed in hurting Obama's image by trumping up stories about solar companies, gun smuggling, or election fraud.

President Obama, not actually overwhelmed with the job of President as the right wing pretends, will not drop out of the race for President.

Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton will not switch places on the ticket. The 2012 Democratic Nominees will be President Obama and Vice President Biden.

The Republican primary will turn out a lot more boring than anyone on the left hopes.

The 2012 Republican Nominees will be Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

The completely pathetic, do-nothing Congress will make the Republicans look so bad they'll lose their House majority.

Republicans will win enough Senate elections to hold 50 seats.

It won't be matter because the Vice President will still be a Democrat come 2013.

President Obama, supported by a strengthening economy, radical Republicans in Congress, and a sad Romney/Gingrich GOP ticket, will win a narrow re-election 51 to 49.

Republicans everywhere will claim the election was stolen, suggest the media still hasn't vetted Obama, and will still wonder about the birth certificate.

Clinton will make plans to leave the White House and will not pursue public office ever again.

Joe Biden will continue making gaffes and baffling Republicans as to how he can stay in public office after all these years.

Liberals will begin drafting Democrats to run in the 2016 Anybody But Joe Biden Democratic primary.

Baseball:

The Los Angeles Dodgers will be sold to a disappointingly bad buyer, the old players will suffer injury after injury, but the team will still have a successful season, winning the division.

The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim will win the ALCS and the LA Times will cheer the possibility of a freeway World Series.

The Dodgers will lose to the Phillies in the NLCS for the 3rd time in 5 years destroying LA Times' dream series.

Unemployment, however, will not drop below 8%. We have “lost” lots of workers. As the economy improves, they will reenter the labor market. Not enough new jobs will be created to accommodate them until well after President Romney’s policies begin to be felt.

Politics

President Obama’s popularity will not rise very much, but it will go up some. It can hardly go much lower. It is a kind of dead cat bounce.

Obama has not been a very good president. The stories are true and they will have an impact. He will run again, however, and with Biden.

Agree that Romney will win, but Newt will not share the ticket. Romney will win early. He really has no competition. Republican right doesn’t like him because he is too moderate, but they want to get rid of Obama more than they want purity, so they will do with Romney.

Republicans will hold the House and win the Senate, although President Romney will not enjoy the big majorities President Obama had.

I would say that Democrats everywhere will claim the election was stolen. This is mostly a Democratic pathology. They will also claim everybody is racist. This they will do no matter the circumstances because it is what they do.

Liberals will be secretly happy to be out of power. They are much better at complaining than at governing. For many of them, even Obama was “too moderate”. But they understand that real liberalism doesn’t work. Liberals are good at talking and finding fault. They will play to those strengths.

“Not enough new jobs will be created to accommodate them until well after President Romney’s policies begin to be felt.”

The path to below 8% isn’t out of reach even with a small uptick in participation that will happen early in the year. I predict it will trend back up toward 9% in the first quarter and then start a month over month decline down below 8%.

“It can hardly go much lower. It is a kind of dead cat bounce.”

You’ve called his approval bad before but it’s not that bad. President Bush would have killed for Obama’s current rating. His approval rose from a low of 25% to 35% once folks realized we’d elected a Democrat and the Bush agenda would end for sure come January 2009.

“Agree that Romney will win, but Newt will not share the ticket.”

Do you have a prediction? I wonder if the candidate pool is not so tainted they’ll have to pick an outsider for sure. Any names? I predicted Gingrich just because that’s funny to me to think of Romney/Gingrich.

“But they understand that real liberalism doesn’t work.”

Real liberalism is a label the right places on things they oppose. In reality progressive policies have become American values and the right wing has worked hard to erode that with slanders and re-writing of history and labels like “socialist” and “communist” and “statist” all meant to make “liberal” seem like the Devil.

Do you think Bush would have been reelected in 2008? Sure enough Bush’s approval was lower, in his second term.

I don’t have a prediction re VP. I would say not any of the current contenders.

I would go with Mitch Daniels, but that would be too boring.

The reason why “liberal” has become pejorative is that the behavior merited the downgrade. The idea of big government actually solving social problems should have died in the 1970s. It mostly went moribund, but revived with Obama. Fortunately, the Tea Party stopped the juggernaut, limiting the damage.

No. But if you look at 2004 you’ll see President Bush’s approval rating hovering in the mid-40’s as the 9/11 bump finally ran out and he returned to what his approval was before the attacks. Bush improved to about 50% by November and won with 51%. For President Obama the mid 40’s is not all that bad. There’s time left for it to improve. It’s been on the upswing for 4 weeks now. He’s at an average of 47% right now. President Bush was polling exactly that low as late as August 2004.

President Bush started off very low. He got a big bump from 9/11, which as you say was wearing off. He also was in the middle of a war.

Obama started off in the stratosphere of approval. His 68% was topped only by Kennedy. Bush started at 57% and Reagan at only 51%. And 25% disapproved of Bush before he even started; compared to Obama at only 12%.

Bush kept most of his support through his first term. He “lost” only around 5%. And remember that he was working between the 25% who never liked him and the approval of only 51%. Obama had a much better range, 12% disapproval and 68% plus.

Beyond that, Bush was doing well in December 2003, with a 68% rate. He was punching well above his weight.

Obama’s only hope is to play dirty and trash his opponent. This he will do. But I think we can beat Obama. He has not been a good president. Now he has a record, we know what he is like. We should go for change we can believe in.

I don’t know how bad it is for Obama. These are hard things to measure in real world.

It will also change. Basically, however, I think that we have Obama beat. We just need a reasonably good candidate and campaign.

I think Mitt will get the nomination. He is probably not as good a candidate as Obama (who is a great talker and promiser) but he will make a better president. I think the American people will be smart enough to see that, now that they have seen Obama

The Obama of 2008 could have beat Romney, since he could have promised all those things he could not deliver. The Obama of 2012 has a record of failure. The American people will probably appreciate a candidate who actually understands the economy. Romney’s business background would have hurt in 2008. In 2012 we will be glad to have some adult supervision in the White House.

Actually Democrats think Republicans are super smart. When you hear the accusations that a few Republicans can “steal” elections - even in Democratic controlled cities - or that Republicans can trick the entire populace into voting for them, you know that one Republican must be smarter than a dozen Democrats.

Obama is beatable. Republicans do not need a superstar, just someone better than Obama. That is not very hard if we are talking about actually doing the job as president. It is harder in the election, since Obama is a great campaigner.

But it’s clear that the Republicans don’t have a reasonably good candidate. Not a single one.

I think Mitt will get the nomination. He is probably not as good a candidate as Obama (who is a great talker and promiser) but he will make a better president.

Mitt may well get the nomination, but it’s really clear that the GOP doesn’t really like him. The GOP faced the same situation when McCain was running, too. They put up the candidate they think has the best shot in a general sense, but his own party has no passion for that kind of candidate.

I think the American people will be smart enough to see that, now that they have seen Obama

Smart enough to see what? Mitt has spent huge amount of cash completely erasing all record of what he did while governor, and he refuses to release his tax returns. He’s hiding his dirt — and voters don’t trust that kind of person.

The Obama of 2008 could have beat Romney, since he could have promised all those things he could not deliver. The Obama of 2012 has a record of failure.

I could be wrong, but I get the sense that Americans are a lot angrier at the failure of Congress to get anything done because they clearly wanted to thwart this president, than they are with how Obama made promises and then failed to deliver them.

The American people will probably appreciate a candidate who actually understands the economy. Romney’s business background would have hurt in 2008. In 2012 we will be glad to have some adult supervision in the White House.

In this economy the sentiment isn’t running with wealthy 1%er’s like Romney. The man thinks “Corporations are People” and no one with any sense is buying that.

The top 1% earns $343,927 a year or more. Obama made 1,728,096 last year. Biden was relatively poor. He made only $379,178, but still in the top 1%.

I don’t think this should be a sign of shame. Great they could earn so much money. But I doubt than any major candidate would not be in the top 1%.

If we won’t elect anybody from the top 1%, we probably cannot elect anybody who is successful and/or married to someone successful.

Re Romney’s unpopularity - Democrats will have to refine their talking points. The consensus last year was that Romney was too moderate to be nominated. When he gets nominated, Democrats will want to paint him as a right wing ideologue. I am sure the TP transition is underway.

1. Unemployment will not drop, but the liberal MSM will try to convince America it is below 6%.

2. The European ecomomy will not get better; because socialism cannot work. And no matter how much money is pumped into their economy, it is still a broken system.

3. The US economy will not get better; because Obama has no intentions of doing anything except create chaos. National debt will continue to rise and Obama and company will continue to lie to the American people and dump documents every Friday, like the GAO documents dumped last Friday.

4. Everything the US soldiers have bled and died for will be for nothing; because the extremist Muslims will fill the void created by Obama pulling troops out of the middle-east, for political reasons.

5. If the SP doesn’t declare obamacare unconstitutional, because our politicians don’t have the backbone to do it, the greatest healthcare system in the world will begin to collaps and rationing will begin.

6. And last of all, the United States will become of none effect in the world; fulfilling Obama’s desire to make the US nothing more than a 3rd world nation.

But all of this is subject to change if the American people stand up and say, “we are not going to let 20% of socialists/communists liberals destroy our nation, we are going to take back our government and send Obama back to Chicago, where he can be the king he always wanted to be”.

#1. Does that mean the option is it stays high or else the statistics are a lie?

#2. That’s like saying capitalism can’t work when you compare it to the 2008 financial crisis. Europe’s in a pickle but it’s not simply the fault of socialism.

#3. Don’t look now, but the US economy has been improving for two straight years and it will continue doing so for a third this year. As for the debt it has been growing for decades. We could hardly expect Obama to turn that thing around in 4 years.

#4. Where has Obama pulled troops from for political reasons?

#5. The US healthcare system is only the greatest in the world in the minds of folks like yourself. It’s not the worst but it’s far, far from the best.

#6. In the next year? We’ll go from a global super power to no effect in the world? That’s quite a prediction.

Re Iraq - Obama pulled out of Iraq for political reasons. He botched the negotiations to keep a small but significant number of troops there.

It is a gamble based on the Obama vision for the world. Obama threw the dice. He gambled that the number of deaths that his action provokes will be small enough not to create a generalized chaos and that Iran will be sufficiently over-stretched by its various other problems not to be able to take advantage.

I hope this works out. My guess is that we have better than even odds that it will. But Obama chose a riskier strategy than I think he could have or should have.

Re the economy - the economy has been growing, but at an anemic rate compared with other recoveries. IMO, this is not in spite of but BECAUSE of the Obama stimulus. It pulled economic activity forward, probably making the recession a bit shallower in 2009, but at the cost of future (i.e. now) recovery.

Obama gambled that the economy would recover in the natural way and that his stimulus would not hurt much and would get credit for the upswing (rooster taking credit for sunrise). He lost this gamble and is now trying to obfuscate to explain it.

Re statistics - there is lots of spin. I remember - on the pages of this blog - when the left side said that 4.7% unemployment under Bush was really terrible because it didn’t measure everybody (they never explained why). Now that unemployment is almost twice as high, they are trying to explain that the real rate is lower because of changes in the labor market.

Not many people really believe this crap, but it serves the purpose of clouding the situation so that Obama can pivot to other issues.

I don’t understand how following the agreement set by President Bush to pull out of Iraq on this date and President Obama’s diplomatic team failing to negotiate a longer stay for a small group means Obama pulled out for political reasons.

I guess if you mean those political reasons are Iraqi politics. I’m pretty sure Steve’s argument was meant to say Obama put his own politics ahead of security. You know, better vote Obama out now or we’ll all die. That argument never leaves the right for long.

“…when the left side said that 4.7% unemployment under Bush was really terrible because it didn’t measure everybody…”

Bad political arguments do not change the reality of how unemployment numbers work and are calculated. I made similar arguments in the past myself and that was wrong.

“…Now that unemployment is almost twice as high, they are trying to explain that the real rate is lower because of changes in the labor market.”

I don’t know what “real rate” means but I do know U3 is lower due the trickle of new jobs and the people pouring out of the workforce at the same time. U6 underemployment is lower as well due to the same factors. The sense that it’s low only because people are giving up doesn’t work because U6 measures people who have given up. For better or worse there is a fundamental change in the labor force that started ten years ago and will continue for decades.

Isn’t partisanship great! It allows people to defend the corruption of their own prima Donna’s by saying the other side is just as guilty. This makes life easier, we don’t have to address the corruption.